X/Twitter kills off its ‘Circles’ feature

X (formerly Twitter) will soon disable Circles, in favor of an ‘improved Communities’—which is their own take on Facebook’s Groups feature.

PSA: we’re disabling Circles by October 31.

more info → https://t.co/sHY9l6SUFw

— Support (@Support) September 21, 2023

In a support document, the platform says it is “deprecating” its Circles feature as of October 31, 2023.

After the said date, users will lose the ability to exclusively share their posts with their hand-picked Circle of friends and prevent new users from joining.

“You will, however, be able to remove people from your Circle, by unfollowing them,” X stated.

Once unfollowed, they will no longer have access to your private Circle tweets. Even if you decide to follow them again in the future, they will still be kept in the dark about those Circle tweets.

Although it is unclear from X/Twitter whether Circle tweets will remain private after the feature shuts down. It might be a wise to delete any concerning tweets if you have any worries.

Users can still keep their X/Twitter profile private and avoid interactions with random people. However, with the removal of the Circles feature, there is no other method to selectively filter which followers see specific posts.

Elon Musk previously mentioned that they’re shutting down Twitter Circles in favor of an improved Communities. This feature is now live with its own tab, and search bar to find a variety of communities.

We’re deprecating Circles in favor of improved Communities & DM group chat

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2023

Anyone can join either a public community or a private one through member invites.

Posts are visible to all users on X, but only members of the specific Community can actively engage and participate in the conversation.